There are 3 things that I look at when entering a trade:

1. Location


2. Direction (including strength of conviction in that direction)


3. Timing

Chart-Ex have as part of their logo "Timing is Everything" which is very true.

If you enter near your exit stop then you risk very little on each trade.

Location
Traders use many tools to find a location for entry. I mainly use Market Profile. Others use Pivot Points, Fibonacci and visually identified support and resistance areas.

Direction
You need to be convinced that the market will move in the direction that you are about to enter your trade. I use a proprietary indicator called Alpha for this which gives me both direction and strength of possible move. You can use an oscillator or momentum or other indicator for this information. You need to find something the suits your style and personality. What works for fellow traders might not work for you.

Timing
If you are entering a counter-trend trade then it is best to enter on market excess - when the market has overshot and over-reacted and there is a high chance of a pullback. Because I trade the equity indices I use $TICK to measure this. I have an indicator that I have created that keeps track of $TICK through the day and tells me when $TICK has reached an extreme and plots that on the chart for me and rings a bell to warn me. I call this indicator TimerA1.

At the time I signed up for TM you had to have Esignal to use the Marketshaman tools. The tools were designed for use with Esig and I had to drag files from Esig into TM. There was talk that it would eventually be free of Esig but I don't know if that is the case or not currently. TM is still very much a work in progress as far as its volume tools, most of which Duryea is the mind behind, and Jeremy of TM is the one who makes it work in the program.

Is Trade Maven a trading platform or charting package or both?

I emailed Trade Maven and got this prompt and friendly reply:

quote:

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TM is a combination trading platform and charting. The charts are constructed from scratch as a native part of the platform, allowing for trading through the charts, visualization of trades on the charts, etc. TM also has a Professional version which includes ellaborate volume analysis tools. Focused on Auction Market Theory and Market Profile, TM has usefull tools such as uniqe value charts, Institutional Volume Filter, ellaborate volume studies and averages. The BISP calculator currently ships w/ TM but requires eSignal. The 3.0 verison of TM (releasing towards the end of July) has them built in natively. TM also provides daily & weekly charts w/ accurate historical tick data.. This will also be used in the backtesting mechanism that performs bid/ask tick level backetesting.

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Timing

Another way of measuring excess and timing an entry for a counter trend trade is to watch volume. Volume will frequently peak at turning points in the market. In fact, I'm fairly certain that it peaks more often than not - i.e. over 50% of the time. Measuring this is difficult and subjective and so I have not been able to quantify it but I remember when trying to do it by eye once I was under the impression that 3 out of ever 4 market turns were accompanied by excessive volume - 75%.

If you're not watching a time based chart then you need an indicator that will replicate volume - if for example you're watching a volume based chart. I use one called BarSpeed which tells me how fast the volume bars are forming and this shows excess buying or selling.

Getting in on the extreme is tricky and requires 7th dan video game reactions on your mouse. You also need to take partial profits quickly and move the stop aggressively to break-even.

Remember that this is only for manually entering a counter trend trade during a fast move in the market.